
09/26/2025
This is Clipperton Island.
At first glance, it’s just a tiny, barren ring of coral floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But this unassuming speck of land has a history darker than most could imagine.
In the late 19th century, nations fought over it — not for its beauty, but for a rare and valuable resource it possessed. To stake their claim, Mexico sent families to colonize it, ensuring supplies were regularly shipped to keep them alive.
Then, something went horribly wrong. The shipments stopped. The colonists were abandoned, left to survive on an inhospitable island. And in that isolation, one man revealed himself as something far more terrifying than hunger.
This is their horrifying story.
A Remote Speck in the Pacific
Nestled in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Clipperton Island seems almost innocuous — a barren, inhospitable atoll betraying little of the horrors it would later witness.
Its discovery is tied to Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, though the confirmed sighting came in 1711, when English privateer John Clipperton, attacking Spanish ships, stumbled across the tiny coral ring that would one day bear his name.
At 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometers), it’s a small atoll made almost entirely of coral. In the center lies a stagnant freshwater lagoon, rich in minerals but incapable of supporting fish — its only residents are algae. Surrounding reefs do host fish, but they remain mostly out of reach of the island itself.
Plant life is sparse: only coconut trees and a few hardy vines cling to life among the coral, while poisonous crabs roam the shore. The skies, however, are alive with over a dozen species of seabirds, whose droppings cover the island in ammonia, giving it a perpetual stench.
Then there’s the isolation. Clipperton sits 621 miles from the nearest land, the coast of Mexico. It was once called the Island of Passion, but given the events that unfolded there, the harsher nickname “scab of an island” seems far more fitting.
The Guano Gold Rush
Clipperton’s story is inseparable from the guano trade. For over a century, France, Mexico, Britain, and the United States vied for control of this remote atoll, all in pursuit of its most precious resource: guano.
Guano, the excrement of seabirds and bats, was extraordinarily valuable as fertilizer. In 1804, a German geographer visiting Peru observed locals using guano to grow remarkably fertile crops. He sent samples back to Europe, sparking a rush for guano deposits worldwide, including the barren Clipperton Island.
A Paradise Turned Nightmare
When Mexico established a colony there, they initially sent families with supplies, believing the atoll could be tamed. But once the supply chain faltered, isolation and desperation took hold. And amid the isolation, something far worse than hunger emerged… a human monster in the making.
The island’s story is one of survival, madness, and brutality — a chilling testament to how isolation can warp humanity....https://newsletter24h.com/cuongrss96/6-years-stranded-on-desolate-pacific-island/